[Jaimefout]

I recently took in 4 cichlids that had been living in horrible conditions, the water was so nasty you couldn't even see the fish unless they swam up against the front glass. Im keeping them in a 55 gallon QT tank. They all had horrible long white poop and 2 have bad cloudy eye. I treated them all with clout for the first 5 days. By the fifth day they were all eating good and pooping normal. I then started treating with tetracycline for the cloudy eye and any other bacterial stuff that might be going on. The directions said to do 2 full treatments which equals 4 days of dosing every 24 hours and doing a 25% water change after the first 48. Today is the end of day four and all the fish look good except one. Both his eyes have this clear/white film over them. It almost looks like cataracts. He's eating but I can tell he's having a hard time seeing the flakes cause he just bites at the water in the vicinity of the food until he gets a few flakes.
What should I do now? The medicine has my tank cloudy as can be and I was thinking about just doing a big water change tomorrow and seeing if he will get better after being in good clean water for a while? I don't want the other fish to get reinfected though and I don't want him to get worse. Should I try something else? Could he have permanent damage from this? I've never dealt with fish in this condition before so any advice would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[Cyphro]

Cloudy on the inside or some kind of junk on their eye?

If the inside of the eye is cloudy you can't do anything.

If there is **** on the eye then put salt in the tank and keep the water super clean. Sometimes if it is really bad then I take the fish to the sink and run water over the eye a while and that can clean it off.

 

[DJRansome]

Be careful about too much clean water too soon, strange as that sounds. Fish acclimate to the toxins in their water so frequent small water changes to make gradual improvements is best.

IME cloudy clears up in days or may be permanent.

 

[Jaimefout]

Ok thanks!! In the meantime is it contagious to the other fish?

 

[Cyphro]

What happens is that bad water generally has very low ph, which makes the pollutants less toxic. So if there is a lot of ammonia and nitrates in the tank you can change the water 50%, raise the ph, and wind up killing all the fish.

For me if things get really dirty then I stick a hose in one end to fill water and one to drain and just let it run for about half an hour and change out everything that way, then put in the dechlorinator and any meds/salt/whatever you need tp put in after that. It is not technically a 100% water change I guess, but you should have gotten virtually all of the pollutants out by then and have pure fresh water and the fish seem to love it.

 

[Jaimefout]

Cloudy on the inside or some kind of junk on their eye?

If the inside of the eye is cloudy you can't do anything.

If there is #%$& on the eye then put salt in the tank and keep the water super clean. Sometimes if it is really bad then I take the fish to the sink and run water over the eye a while and that can clean it off.

It appears to be like a film covering the whole outside of the eye.